Fame, Money, and Power: The Rise of Peisistratos and "Democratic" Tyranny at Athens

Appendix A. The Site of the Attic Deme Phila

  The Site of the Attic Deme Philaïdai ` Philaïdai was proximate to the temple of Brauronian Artemis in eastern Attika, and the precinct of Artemis has long been identified just to the west of Brauron Bay (map , fig. ).To date, there has been no certain identification of Philaïdai for lack of conclusive material remains.Adding to the problem is the fact that the literary evidence about it is sparse and unhelpful.1 I visited the area of Brauron in spring  and summer , , and , specifically to locate and verify the deme site of Philaïdai .In addition to what little the literary evidence supplied and in lieu of documentary evidence,my criteria for location were:() proximity to the Artemis complex at Brauron, () sufficient signs of habitation during the pre-Classical and Classical periods, and () overall aptness of the site in view of conditions one assumes would have affected the choice of settlers in the Late Bronze and DarkAges.(The latter criterion therefore included defensibility and both water and fertile land availability.)2 One such site presented itself first in the spring of , and subsequent visits there strengthened the identification. The literary evidence and some of the problems it entails will be set out before proceeding to discussion of the site I take to be Philaïdai. It is necessary first to confront the question of synonymity:were Brauron and Philaïdai actually the same place? Plutarch says that Philaïdai was the home deme of the Peisistratidai,and he affiliates it with Brauron (Sol. .).3 The relationship of Philaïdai and Brauron is also depicted in the scholion for Ar. Aves :“The Myrrhinousians name Artemis ‘Kolainis,’ just as the people of the Peiraios [call her] ‘Mounichia’ and the people of Philaïdai [call her] ‘Brauronia.’”4 This evidence makes the two, Brauron and Philaïdai, apparently distinct but closely connected. Such a connection could account for the relative lack of evidence about Philaïdai, information about which became subsumed within or occluded by“Brauron .” Certainly, some modern scholars seem to have equated the two.5 According to Philochoros (FrGrHist , F ), an Atthidographer and otherwise creditable source for ancientAttic topography,Brauron was one of the twelve original Kekropid towns of Attika, the ancient Do – dekapoleis.6 Jacoby pointed out, however, that Philochoros’ designation of the twelve lacks basis and credibility in this instance:evidently the Atthidographer invented his list from those places he assumed to be most ancient in Attika.7 About three hundred years later, Strabo essentially repeated Philochoros’ list, including Brauron among coastal demes of Attika, while still later the Greek traveler Pausanias described Brauron as a “deme.”8 The Roman Pliny, in the first century C.E., before Pausanias, classed Brauron as an oppidum (town), and Pomponius Mela made it an urbs (city).9 All of these,including Strabo,undoubtedly followed an older Greek source that designated Brauron a polis, an asty, or a deme. Indeed, by the first century B.C.E., Brauron was desolate,“no more than a name.” Since the authors later than Philochoros generally agree about Brauron, it is reasonable to conclude that they followed the same or similar sources for Brauron. Inasmuch as Philochoros calls Brauron a polis, albeit obliquely, the ultimate source for these writers may well have been his Atthis. Although such testimony about Brauron (even from Philochoros) is flimsy, as we shall see, it has nevertheless been taken to indicate veritable political conditions in the time of Kleisthenes. Specifically, it is assumed that Brauron was politically the most important location in the region before Kleisthenes’ democratic reforms.10 That notion is contradicted, however, by the fact that not it but Philaïdai was designated the official deme of the region in the Kleisthenic arrangement.To explain the disagreement , Whitehead, for example, has argued that Kleisthenes went against his normal practice in designating demes by transferring political power to the lesser Philaïdai because of the Peisistratids’ famous ties to Brauron.11 Such a transference was part of Kleisthenes’ attempt to dissolve the Peisistratids’power base in the area and,along with it,any residue of regional political influence that the still at-large Peisistratids might con-       DEME Ï tinue to derive from their connection to “Brauron.” Kleisthenes’ aim was to consolidate his new political arrangement and so the democracy by eliminating the Peisistratids from the new order.12 Whitehead...